he fear and jealousy. She
must let Rose see that she was not dangerous; and she knew how.

She began by asking Rose when she was coming out to Putney? And Rose
answered that she was busy and couldn't say for sure.

"You won't be busy in August, will you? If you'll come then I'll show
you a room you haven't seen, the prettiest room in the house."

Rose drew in her breath. Her face had the soft flush in it that came
when she was deeply moved.

"I've got some of its dear little things all ready for it now," said
Jane. "You must see them."

"I should dearly love to."

"I never thought, Rose, that I should have it."

Rose meditated. "They come," said she, "mostly to them that doesn't
think."

"There's only one thing, Rose. I'm afraid. Oh, I'm so dreadfully
afraid."

"I shouldn't be afraid," said Rose, "if it was me."

"It's because I've been so happy."

"You'll be 'appier still when it's come. It'd make all the difference to
me if I 'ad a child. But that's what I haven't and never shall have."

"You don't know. You don't know."

"Yes. I do know." Rose's mouth trembled. She glanced unaware at the
pillow that lay so smooth beside her own. "I 'aven't let on to him how
much I want it. I wouldn't" (Rose steadied her mouth to get the words
out). "Not if it was ever so."

"You darling," said Jane, and kissed her, and at that Rose burst into
tears.

"I oughtn't to be keeping you here," she said. And they left the
bedroom.

"Aren't you coming in?" said Jane.

Rose had turned away from her at Tanqueray's door.

"I can't," she whispered. "Not with me eyes all swelled up like this."

She went down-stairs to her little kitchen, where in the half-darkness
she crouched down beside Minny who, with humped shoulders and head that
nodded to the fender, dozed before the fire.

XXXVII

Laura Gunning was writing a letter to Tanqueray to congratulate him on
his book and to explain why she had not come to his birthday party. It
was simply impossible to get off now. Papa, she said, couldn't be left
for five minutes, not even with the morning paper.

It was frightfully hard work getting all this into any intelligible form
of words; getting it down at all was difficult. For the last hour she
had been sitting there, starting and trembling at each rustle of the
paper. Mr. Gunning could not settle down to reading now. He turned his
paper over and over again in the vain search for distraction; he divided
it into parts